The accelerator pedal was in a bit of a sorry state, with
the bottom section having been hacked off by a previous owner (after it started
to rot away I am guessing). A door hinge was instead bolted on and welded to
the floor in a ramshackle fashion. It was unsightly and not at all smooth to
operate. Occasionally when driving the pedal would jam solid if depressed too
far. Not particularly good or safe!
I took the later ‘roller ball’ donor pedal that I recently
scored for a fiver at Dubfreeze and compared it against my original and decided
how best to join the two together:
After careful measuring I cut the required bottom section
off of the donor pedal:
Marked up a corresponding cut line on my original pedal and trimmed down accordingly:
Marked up a corresponding cut line on my original pedal and trimmed down accordingly:
Got the two pieces and aligned them on a flat sturdy piece of copper backer:
After tacking the sections in place from behind I unclamped and double checked everything was correctly aligned before fully welding from the front side. Had to crank up the amps on the welder to ensure good penetration as the steel is quite thick:
After linishing back I reached for my new magic toy, a 5" Random Orbit Sander:
I am so impressed with the way that this thing finishes the metal. It really helps smooth out and blend the repaired area given an almost invisible finish (assuming that prior care has been taken with panel alignment etc):
After a lick of zinc primer I measured out the correct location for the 6mm hole. I don’t think this serves any particular purpose, but who am I to argue with the wisdom of VW:
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